From my archives.

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In April, 1959 the well regarded Asahi Camera magazine (it ran from 4/1926 through 7/2020) published an extraordinarily detailed review of the recently introduced Leica M2.

Late version of the Leica M2 with the first version of the rigid 50mm f/2 Summicorn.

Like the revolutionary Leica M3 of 1954, the M2 continued with the magnificent combined range/viewfinder but stepped the magnification down from 0.91x (almost life size) to 0.72x (not 0.75x as stated in the Asahi Camera report), to permit display of the 35mm frame. M3 users had to either use an external finder (not possible if you wanted the Leicameter fitted) or had to resort to the clunky ‘goggles’ versions of the 35mm optic to get the correct field of view. The M3’s native frames are 50mm (always displayed), 90mm and 135mm, the latter two switched either with the selector lever on the front of the camera or when the related lens was fitted.

Rumors that the M2, which was cheaper at the time, was less well made are nonsense. Yes, the rangefinder design was simplified (??? Look at Figure 4 in the Asahi Camera report – both look insanely complex to me) to lower production costs, there was no self-timer and the frame counter had to be reset manually after changing films. But otherwise everything was very much identical and, in fact, to Leitz’s surprise, the M2 became increasingly popular as photojournalists migrated to the 35mm lens. Better still, the clunky and always displayed 50mm frame in the M3 with its rounded corners (a Kodachrome slide mount legacy) was gone and the three frames in the M2 (35/50/90mm) would only appear one at a time. I have owned and used both the M3 and M2 for decades and much prefer the finder of the M2 for street snapping, as I tend to favor the 35mm lens.

Click the image for the PDF file.

The Leica M2 had several minor variations. The first version came with a button you had to hold down while rewinding the film. Not great. The second version had the same button but once depressed it stayed down until the film advance lever was worked. Much better. The Asahi Camera report picks up on this. The third version reverted to the same small lever used on the M3. It’s very unlikely you will activate this accidentally, and quite how the earlier button design saved production costs beats me. The lever design is the best of all. You can see it in the first image above. Maybe this was just another case of the old German belief : “Why make it simple when complex works just as well?”

And the originally deleted self-timer could be retrofitted if desired (at goodness knows what horrendous cost) or came standard with later production. But these are minor quibbles. There are strong grounds for arguing that the M2 was the best street M Leica ever made. The successor to the M2 and M3 was the M4 and came with a cluttered finder, showing multiple frames at once. The M5 was a design disaster. The M6 saw construction quality fall, internal screws became rivets, and the whole thing just did not feel as good in the hands, TTL meter notwithstanding. I know. I used one a lot. The single worst feature was that there was no top plate readout to take an exposure reading so you had to raise the camera to the eye to accomplish this. A camera at eye level is anathema to the stealthy approach dictated by street photography of people.

The Asahi Camera report also reviews the first rigid version of the 50mm f/2 Summicron, the finest standard lens of the time. I used one for years and it really is wonderful. Sadly, the collector market has seen to it that a half decent copy will set you back $1,200. Many of this vintage have ‘cleaning’ scratches from fools who don’t seem to understand the purpose of a UV filter, or dried up grease, or corroded/oily diaphragm blades. And haze and fungus are common. Finding a good one is no mean feat.

The scans in the PDF above are high definition at 300dpi, and were made with the excellent scanner included in the Epson T-8550 printer. To view larger images on a Mac hit Command+.

Finally!

For an index of all Leica-related articles click here.

Finally!

If you like to use an exposure meter for light readings and use a film Leica M1, M2, M3, M4, M4-P, M4-2, MA, MD, MDa or MD2, you will be ordering one of these unless you are lucky enough to have a functioning Leicameter M/MC/MR/MR-4.

Finally someone has crafted an accessory shoe meter for the film Leica M which couples with the shutter speed dial.

By way of background I suggest you read my comprehensive piece on the Leicameter first.

Then if accessory shoe mounted meters are of interest read this. I have been using that minuscule Reflx meter with success but I would be the first to admit that speed is not its forte. As with all other accessory shoe meters it is not coupled to the Leica’s shutter speed dial. Decide to change shutter speed or aperture and you must first dial in the new shutter speed/aperture on the meter (slow), then take your light reading (fast) and transfer the indicated aperture/shutter speed to the lens (even slower). It takes time. And you have to struggle with that too small shutter speed dial on the Leica with its even smaller shutter speed engravings. This gets to be less fun and more challenging as anno domini kicks in.

By contrast the coupling Leicameter models attach to the shutter speed dial so you set your shutter speed using the knob on the meter (fast), take your light reading and transfer the aperture to the lens. That knob is large and easy to handle and the Leicameter’s engraved shutter speeds and apertures are large. Pretty speedy if you work in shutter priority mode.

Well, Keks has updated the Leicameter with a 1.3 inch OLED display while retaining the shutter speed dial coupling feature. With the Leicameter MR/MR-4 the angle of measurement is equivalent to that of a 90mm lens, which is 26 degrees diagonally. Thus you can use the 90mm frame selector lever for ‘aimed’ exposure measurement. The pidgin English on Keks’s site states: “30 average metering (Approximately 50mm Lens view)” which is wrong as 30 degrees is closer to the field of view of a 90mm lens. If it is 30 degrees that’s a good thing. (The diagonal angle of view of a 50mm lens is 46 degrees).

The battery, while rechargeable (ugh!) is said to deliver a 10 hour life after a one hour USB-C charge. Assuming that the display is set to stay on for 30 seconds – the period is adjustable – once a reading is taken that translates to 1200 ‘on’ cycles or 1200 exposures – call it 33 rolls of film. For me, with a 50% ‘keeper’ rate, that’s a long time and a lot of film. And Keks claims the battery is user replaceable, and while I see no hatch for the replacement, this is promising. See below for an image of the base retaining screws.

Eventually all batteries, rechargeable or not, die. Ask owners who laid down $7,000 for their Leica M240 digital not so long ago for which no replacement batteries are available. That’s a costly paperweight and Leica should be damned for no longer making the batteries. (The market is too small for Chinese aftermarket manufacturers). With the Keks M-meter, maybe you have to undo four screws in 5 years’ time? And they claim it uses a common rechargeable cell. It’s unclear from their images whether the four retainers for the base of the Keks meter are rivets or screws. Hopefully the latter, if their claim about the battery being replaceable is true.

This is not Keks’s first foray into light meter manufacture. B&H lists a couple of models in a variety of finishes, so there’s some reason to think Keks know what it is doing. Here are the specifications for the Keks M-Meter from their site:

Keks M-meter specifications.
That ‘Max/Min aperture’ customization setting is interesting.

Using images from Keks’s web site, here is my forensic analysis with thoughts and questions:

Keks’s meter is less wide (70mm) than the Leicameter MC and MR/MR-4 at 71mm.
At 17.3mm front to back it’s 2.7mm slimmer than the Leicameter.

That’s good news. It means more clearance for an aftermarket rapid rewind crank which I consider an essential enhancement to the stock M knob rewind. While the paper specifications suggest a 1mm width difference it’s clearly more like 5mm, looking at the above and top plate images.

It looks great:

On a Leica M2.

The display is big and clear. Lets hope Keks programs a black-on-white option:

The buttons on the right are for ISO setting.
If you use EVs those are also displayed.

You recharge it using USB-C:

Recharging. The rear button is for taking a light reading.
One press for instantaneous reading, two for continuous.

And you don’t even have to remove it from the camera. And there’s no funky specialized 1.35 volt battery considerations like with the Leicameter MR/MR-4. Looking at the images on the Keks site it’s clear that the socket at the meter end is USB-C, not the awful and fragile Micro-USB. Good:

USB-C recharging socket on the meter.

And here’s a surprise:

British (design) and Best.

It looks like the retainer, lower right, is a hex head Allen screw, but it’s hard to tell. Here’s another image – the same goes for the accessory shoe retainers. I have increased the contrast in their image to make things clearer:

Hex head Allen screw retainers?

The coupling pin for the Leica’s shutter speed dial is there – let’s hope they got the length and location right:

Coupling pin.

The various Leicameters had five screws in the accessory shoe – three to attach it to the meter and two to tilt the meter left to right to ensure proper coupling of the pin with the camera’s shutter speed dial. The Keks appears to have the three attachment screws only, no provision for tilt, but I imagine one could easily shim the shoe in the event of incomplete pin coupling with the shutter speed dial. It looks like they are using Allen head hex screws (hard to tell from their images), so this has to be determined in practical use.

And it looks like exposure compensation is a feature:

Exposure compensation setting.

If this meter functions well, Keks will sell a lot of these. And I will be one of their first sales. With a functioning Leicameter MR-4 selling for $200 and up, and they are all end-of-life, this is a bargain. Keks offers variants in black chrome or shiny black paint for those thus inclined. The black paint version is on brass for fetishists who like the worn/war zone look. The other two are on an alloy base.

My order.

The final icing on the Keks cake? If your early M3 has the 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50 etc. shutter speed progression you can set it up so. How cool is that? And you can limit the aperture and shutter speed ranges displayed to your specific hardware. For example, the aperture range in the Keks goes down to f/128 whereas the smallest aperture on any Leica lens that I am aware of is f/32. And you can switch between full stop, half stop and one third stop intervals. The same applies for ISO settings. Shutter stops are at full values only. Display brightness is adjustable in four steps (25%/50%/75%/100%) and Auto. The display ‘live’ time is adjustable from 30 seconds all the way to 5 minutes in seven steps. Hard to see using anything other than 30 seconds. A 15 seconds lower limit would be better. You can calibrate the shutter speed to correctly match that set on the camera in case it’s off. Nice.

The only drawback I can think of, compared with the MR/MR-4 Leicameter, is that you have to turn the Keks on to change shutter speeds. Not a big deal as you will be taking a light reading before doing that in any case.

You can download the user manual by clicking here. It’s silent as to battery replacement.

Tiny and accurate.

Finding a working and accurate Leicameter light meter for the Leica M2/3/4 is an exercise in frustration. The earlier selenium cell batteryless ones are mostly dead, their cells exhausted after some 70 years or more on planet earth. Search long and hard for the later Leicameter MR or MR4 and one in twenty auction listings will actually include words that the device has been tested and is accurate. Why even bother looking at the others? And then it’s far from inexpensive. Reckon on $200 for a decent one which does not look like a survivor of the Tet Offensive. And if you have fitted your Leica M2 or M3 with a rapid rewind crank or you use an M4 with the stock canted crank, then you must opt for the Leicameter MR4, over the earlier MR, to provide clearance for those cranks, or be prepared to remove the meter every time you have to rewind a roll of film. So now your chances of finding a good MR4 are further halved. Ugh!

The advantage of the Leicameter is that it couples to the Leica’s shutter speed dial and provides its own considerably larger dial for adjustment of shutter speeds.

But if you have despaired of finding a good one there is a host of inexpensive aftermarket alternatives, any one of which will fit in your accessory shoe and which can be found for under $100. Downside? None couples to the shutter speed dial. B&H lists no fewer than seventeen choices from the overpriced Voigtländer at $225 to the Reflx for $50, and it’s the latter I’m writing about. It’s what I chose because its size and looks most closely conform to the Leica film camera ethos. The fitment and positioning are just right.

It ships without a battery so buy a CR1632 when ordering the meter. The meter uses a silicon cell (so does not suffer from the excess red sensitivity of the Cadmium Sulphide cell in the Leicameter MR/MR4) and like the MR/MR4 measures over a center weighted 30 degree angle. It is small, encased in alloy and looks just perfect on my Leica M3. The accessory shoe foot can be mounted in one of three positions and is shipped centered. Looking from the back I had to shift the foot to the right whereupon the meter aligns perfectly with the shutter speed dial.

Perfect alignment with the shutter speed dial.
Fitment and positioning are just right.

Note the black felt tip shutter speed indexing line (red arrow), added by yours truly.

The meter ships with a spare battery holder – it’s hard to remove for battery insertion and requires that you push the flexible tab away from you and then tug on the door to the right. Broken fingernails are likely so I used a plastic pointer (for the tab) and spudger (for the holder). The battery goes in with the + sign showing, when the meter is upside down. Reflx provides a spare battery holder as well as two spare mounting screws for the shoe and a small slotted head screwdriver. They claim a battery life of one year. The screws are a tight fit and are unlikely to come out. Should they loosen I will apply a tiny drop of blue Loctite thread locker #242 to each to confer safety.

Is the chrome plating on the meter as good as that on the Leica? No. It’s coarser and slightly differently colored. Nothing compares with the chrome plating on a Leica.

The Reflx meter weighs 19 grams, or 2/3rds oz. By contrast the Leicameter MR4 weighs 76 grams (2 2/3rds oz.).

The included instruction sheet is printed in such a small typeface that it’s next to useless. I went to the maker’s web site and enlarged/copied the instruction sheet there. Even so, it could be less confusing.

Here’s what you need to know.

After inserting the CR1632 battery, mount the meter on your camera. On my M3 it’s a reassuringly snug fit. No way it’s going to fall out, even if brutally nudged. Now single press the black button on the rear. The LCD display will show the ISO you have set (it ships set at ISO100) then switches to aperture (left) and shutter speed (right). Nice that you get this ISO reminder. That single press locks the exposure reading so if you need a new reading simply depress the rear button again – whether the meter is on or off – being sure to point the meter at your subject area.

For street photographers who need to be unobtrusive, a light meter should be decipherable when looking down on the camera. Many shoe mounted meters have the display in the back which defeats the unobtrusiveness goal. With the Reflx you look down. By the way, the single biggest complaint I had with my Leica M6 (apart from the lower build quality compared with my M2 and M3) was that its built-in TTL meter could only be set with the camera to the eye. The diodes indicating exposure were in the viewfinder. There was no top plate readout of exposure. So you had to raise the camera to your eye to first measure the light, then take the picture. Completely wrong. Are you a street snapper? Get a meter you look down on to take the light measurement. An iPhone metering app is almost as obtrusive as that Leica M6 of old.

To change the ISO, after a single press on the rear button hold the right top Up arrow button for three seconds and then increase or decrease the ISO using the two top arrow buttons.

The worst description in the instructions is the meaning and use of the Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority modes available. You switch from Aperture Priority (‘A’ at top left of the LCD display) to Shutter Priority (‘T’). with a double press of the rear button. In ‘A’ mode the meter will restart showing the last aperture you used. In T mode the meter will start showing the last shutter speed you used. For street snapping I ordinarily leave the shutter speed fixed – say at 1/250th of a second – so I set the meter to T mode and to a shutter speed of 1/250 using the Up and Down button on top. Then taking a light reading becomes a one button press affair, every bit as fast as the Leicameter. Point the camera at the area to be measured, press the rear button once and transfer the indicated aperture to the lens. No need for any other button presses as long as you stick with the shutter speed dialed in on both camera and meter.

This single button press method is quite different from that used by the costly Voigtländer or the TT Artisan $62 knockoff of that design. On those you have to turn either a top mounted physical click stopped aperture or shutter speed dial until the center one of three LEDs alights. Far less elegant, though analog dials and click stops are always nice for an analog human being.

Finally, a long single press on the rear button puts the Reflx into exposure compensation mode, adjustable with the top buttons in 1/2 stop changes. A separate flag notifies the user that EV mode is engaged. This is actually quite handy should you find that your meter is reading incorrectly compared with one of known accuracy, allowing for one – albeit across the board – exposure correction without having to input a misleading ISO value for film speed.

Accuracy? Dead on. I checked it against the meter in my Nikon D800 with the zoom lens at 90mm and in averaging mode, which approximates the measurement angle and method of the Reflx and in both weak interior and a variety of bright exterior lighting the Reflx was in agreement with the Nikon.

Display size? Though the Reflx is very small indeed the aperture and shutter speed display is easily large enough for stress free reading, and much larger than the engraved digits on any Leicameter.

Battery life? I have no idea. There are four bars showing at the top right of the meter with a fresh cell but it remains to be seen whether the one year life is accurate. These trend down to three or two bars after one minute of use suggesting either excess current draw or incorrect calibration of the battery strength indicator. Let’s hope it’s the latter, because I really do not want to remember to carry spare batteries. (The display pops right back to four bars after a minute or two of rest). You can turn the meter off with a three second press on the Down button or it switches itself off after 55 seconds (during which time the battery is working only to power the LCD display, not the light measuring circuitry so current draw should be light). The instructions confusingly refer to this as ‘sleep mode’. If you turn the meter on again in under 5 minutes the ISO display, which is otherwise the first thing you see, is turned off. No biggie, as it’s unlikely that you will change the ISO setting by accident. After a 5 minute off period the ISO display will show once more on start-up.

One missing feature is no provision of an illumination option for low light use. The black on grey figures in the LCD display get hard to read in poor light. Well, there’s always the flashlight in your cell phone, I suppose, a sub-optimal solution at best. In this regard the white galvanometer needle in the Leicameter is superior. Further, there’s no continuous reading option available in the Reflx like there is in all Leicameters (with the black side button depressed with the MR/MR4, by default in the M and MC). One press of the rear button of the Reflx and the light reading is locked. To take another reading you have to press the rear button again.

One other missing feature is the absence of any warning that you have reached the limits of the meter’s range. For example, in very poor light the meter will show an aperture of f/1 in shutter priority mode whereas in fact something even faster than f/1 is called for. It would be nice if the manufacturer would revise their software to flash the aperture symbol at the limit, warning you that you need a far slower shutter speed for a usable aperture. A like issue affects the shutter speed setting in aperture priority mode. I get around this by reminding myself that if a ridiculous aperture like f/1 is indicated (see the image above) that I need a far slower shutter speed setting. Not a big deal.

Leica ethos, you ask? Well, small, silver chrome, accurate and unobtrusive, not to mention fast. And, unlike that Leica, inexpensive. What’s not to like?

Is this a match or what?.

Plus, unlike that Leicameter of yore, it’s easily pocketed for use on any camera without an accessory shoe and far easier to use ‘off camera’.

One last thought. Many aver that black and white film has such a broad tolerance of incorrect exposure that no meter is needed. This is pure rot. Expose even monochrome film stock incorrectly and definition goes down, highlights or shadows get lost and grain shoots up. There is no excuse for poor exposure whether with color or black and white stock, and there’s simply no way, regardless of how experienced you are, that you will nail exposure without a meter. Would you rather have great originals with a $50 additional outlay or crap that cannot be printed larger than 5″ x 7″ from your $2,000 piece of hardware? And if you do not regard large prints as your goal, why are you wasting money on gear?

Small, handy and accurate.

For an index of all Leica-related articles click here.

In my first outing last weekend with the ‘new’ Leica M3 I had to resort to using an app on the iPhone to measure exposure. Not a big deal but hardly as handy as using a coupled Leicameter attached to the accessory shoe of the camera.

The Leicameter MR4.

There were three major versions of the coupling Leicameter, introduced with the Leica M3 in 1954. Each coupled with the rather too small shutter speed dial on the camera’s top plate, reversing the direction of speed setting to clockwise for shorter shutter speeds and conferring shutter speed changes on a much larger and easier to use knurled knob, which you can see at the lower right, above.

The first two versions used selenium cells which require no battery. The Leicameter M had a mechanical flap to switch between low and high sensitivity. Its successor, the Leicameter MC, dropped the flap in favor of a two position switch, visible at top left in the picture above. Much more elegant. Both of these accepted a rather clunky external booster cell which increased the sensitivity by 2.5 stops from EV6 to EV3.5. The latter corresponds to 1/60 at f/3.5 with ISO100 film.

The MC stuck with the selenium cell and I used one for decades. You had to be sure to point the camera, with meter attached, down to avoid large sky areas as the meter’s angle of acceptance was large, probably about 65 degrees. And the needle did not lock so you noted the aperture reading in that down tilted position, transferring it to the aperture ring on the lens. It was fast and efficient, but sadly finding an MC in working condition is an exercise in futility. It was last made in 1966 and all seem to come with a dead cell, with no replacement parts to be found. Selenium is a poison and its use in exposure enters was banned years ago. The only model variations in the MC, introduced in 1957 when the Leica migrated to standard shutter speed setting (1/4, 1/8, 1/15, etc.) is that the maximum marked aperture started at f/1.5 and changed to f/1.4. Otherwise the meter was unchanged during its 9 or so year life and the MC and its booster came with clip on matte white incident light screens for incident light readings, which were all the rage back then. Instead of measuring the light reflected from a subject you measured the light falling on it. A bit Rube Goldberg but it worked for Hollywood (check all those old Sekonic light meters with the translucent white domes).

The Sekonic L-398A, much loved in film era Hollywood.

The MC was replaced by the MR in the early 1960s and enjoyed a long life, with MR production ending in 1987. Like all Leicameters it was manufactured by Metrawatt in Nuremberg but unlike its predecessors the CdS cell in the MR dictated the use of a PX13 or PX625 1.35 volt battery. There were three significant benefits to the switch from selenium to Cadmium Sulphide light sensitive cells.

• First, sensitivity jumped 1.5 stops to EV2 (1/60th at f/2 with ISO100 film) without the need for a clip on booster cell.
• Second, depressing the black tab at the top left took the meter reading and, when released, locked the needle in place, making for a much more robust light measurement process.
• But maybe the best enhancement was that the light sensitive sensor measured a 27 degree distended angle, equivalent to that of the 90mm lens. So the M3 user (and also the M2 fan) could use the 90mm viewfinder frame to select the area of light measurement. Clever.

And to check battery voltage the black tab at top left, viewed from the front, was pressed towards the camera’s rewind knob and if the needle swung to cover the white dot in the display the battery was deemed to be good.

When the Leica M4 came along in 1967 it replaced the knob rewind of the M2 and M3 (their single worst feature) with an angled, fold-out rewind crank which would interfere with the protruding metering switch at the top left, so the switch was shortened and redesigned in the Leicameter MR4 to the design you can see below. This allows the rewind crank on the M4 to clear the meter so that the film can be rewound with the meter in place. No other changes were made from the MR to the MR4. Because I have fitted an aftermarket rewind crank to my M3 I need that extra clearance just as much as the M4 user, so I opted for the MR4, over the MR, for my M3. So there!

The rewind crank just clears the MR4 meter.

Search long and hard and you can find an MR or MR4 in decent working order, but there’s a snag. It’s always something, right? The mercury battery cells used to power the meter have long been discontinued for the same reason the selenium cell for the M and MC predecessor Leicameters was discontinued. Mercury is poisonous and all that recycled battery waste is probably not a good thing. However, there are three options for powering your Leicameter MR or MR4.

• You can use modern PX625A non-mercury batteries but these deliver 1.5 volts instead of the required 1.35 volts, meaning your meter will read too high a light level. You can compensate for this by setting a higher-than-actual ASA (ISO in modern terms) film speed setting on the meter’s dial, but it’s not exactly an elegant solution. Further the discharge curve of the PX625A differs from that of the old PX625/PX13 so as the voltage falls your light readings may go further askew.
• Secondly you can use a Wein EPX625 air cell which delivers the correct 1.35 volts but lasts only 3-6 months once activated. Not great.
• The seemingly perfect solution is to use a voltage dropping adapter named the ‘Kanto Camera MR-9 Mercury Battery Adapter’ which claims to drop the voltage of a stock 1.55 volts SR43 silver oxide button battery – which fits inside the adapter – to the required 1.35 volts. You can pay Amazon $52 for one or $33 shipped from the far east on eBay, where many are listed. This adapter is somewhat controversial as the adapter appears only to work with a load resistance under 10k ohm. So before investing in one – it’s a one-off lifetime purchase – use a multimeter to check the load resistance of your Leicameter or old camera to see if it comes in under the 10k ohm figure.

The Kanto Camera MR-9 Mercury Battery Adapter.

All Leicameter M and most Leicameter MC/MR/MR4 models came in lovely satin chrome finishes to match that of the chrome Leica body. There were black version for the polyester set to match their equally tasteless black finish M bodies and, as they are rare, these command collector prices. They double in ugliness when the black paint wears off revealing the bare metal (zinc, not brass) underneath. Ugh!

The black finish Leicameter MR4.

The Leicameter MR4 is an effective and accurate light measuring tool if you can find a good one. I was lucky to find one which was overhauled and calibrated, after a long search. Reckon on paying $200 for a good one. The foot which goes in the Leica’s accessory shoe has no fewer than five screws holding it in place. The three large ones attach the foot to the body of the meter while the two small ones adjust tilt. Make sure that, after loosening the three large ones, the tilt is correctly set for parallelism with the camera’s top plate, which will ensure that the coupling pin on the meter’s knurled knob will engage properly with the related cut-out in the camera’s shutter speed dial. Leave those two tilt-adjusting screws too exposed or tilt the shoe too much and you will scratch the top plate of your Leica when inserting the meter.

The accessory shoe screws and the battery compartment
door. The coupling pin for the camera’s shutter speed
dial is visible. The zero adjusting screw is
at the far right.

The only known issue, apart from the battery headaches just described, is that the small swinging door for the battery compartment, which engages the base of the meter along rather slim and fragile rails, has been known to break, so take it easy when replacing the battery.

Can you use the Leicameter MR4 on an early Leica M3 with the 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, etc. non-geometric shutter speed progression? Absolutely. The arc distended by the range of shutter speeds on the camera’s dial on the older M3 models is identical to that where the geometric shutter speed progression (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.) was adopted. The placement of the coupling notch in the shutter speed dial at the ‘B’ setting is also identical. So while the Leicameter MR/MR4 will couple correctly with the old dial, the engraved geometric speeds atop will not respect the clicks of the camera’s dial. When you set the shutter speed to, say, 1/50th, the indicator arrow on the top dial of the Leicameter will fall between 1/30th and 1/60th, as that’s where 1/50th is. But the meter will still measure light correctly.

The included arc of shutter speeds is
identical on the old version and the
new geometric one, as is the placement
of the coupling notch.

For an inexpensive and elegant non-coupling accessory shoe mounted option, take a look at the Reflx meter, reviewed here. It will work with any camera with an accessory shoe, or handheld.

Update March 8, 2025: Well, wouldn’t you know it? The Taiwanese company Keks has just released a digital version of the Leicameter which couples with the shutter speed dial of the Leica M. Priced attractively at $120 it uses an OLED display for aperture, shutter speed and ISO. You can read all about it here.